


Soldier's Superstitions

by glimmerglanger



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Description of Injuries, Gen, I wrote this with the idea that's Cody's got Feelings but there's no explicit Codywan, Implication of Stoning, Left for Dead, Mission Gone Wrong, Whipped, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27244066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glimmerglanger/pseuds/glimmerglanger
Summary: Cody’s brothers started joking about the Jedi and their bad feelings only a few weeks into the war. Over time, the jokes stopped, because there was little funny about the death and pain that followed shortly after the premonitions, in so many cases.It became a superstition, instead.OR, the one where a mission goes wrong after Obi-Wan has a bad feeling about it, and Cody tries to sort things out.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 53
Kudos: 447





	Soldier's Superstitions

**Author's Note:**

> Written for whumptober for the "whipped/left for dead" prompt. Set late during the Clone Wars. Graphic description of injuries.

Cody’s brothers started joking about the Jedi and their bad feelings only a few weeks into the war. Over time, the jokes stopped, because there was little funny about the death and pain that followed shortly after the premonitions, in so many cases.

It became a superstition, instead. The warning that it was always supposed to be. Jedi said they had a bad feeling, and troopers developed little rituals, little ways to ward it off. Cody had watched Rex pull out his blaster, eject the clip, and insert it after the comment, seen other members of the 501st do the same. He’d watched members of the 327th move immediately to bump shoulders with the nearest brother. The 104th muttered something under their breath, always the same word, though they wouldn’t tell anyone what it was.

Members of the 212th knocked twice on their right vambrace, fast and quiet. 

Cody knocked twice on his right vambrace, after their newest orders came through from the Senate, as Obi-Wan stared down at them, gaze flattening out as he read, and said, “Well, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

He watched everyone across the bridge echo the movement.

In the end, it didn’t help.

#

Obi-Wan’s bad feeling was tied directly to their orders to visit a planet out on the Near Rim, a world called N’v’ritel. An unaligned world, Cody read. Thus far, almost three years into the war, they’d managed to stay out of all conflict.

But they were directly in the path of the latest wave of Separatist expansion. Securing an agreement with the world’s leaders would make it easier to cut off Separatist supply lines, if it came to that. They were in a convenient location to serve as a base for the wounded, even.

“What’s the problem with them?” Cody asked, because Obi-Wan was still frowning over the holo, and he’d crossed both arms over his chest. And because it didn’t take more than a moment to notice that there’d been no contact between N’v’ritel and the Republic for years.

Almost a decade, in fact.

Obi-Wan looked up and over at him, but his eyes weren’t focused. Whatever he was seeing was far away. Long ago, perhaps. He said, “Relations are….strained, between the Jedi and the N’v’ritelli.”

Cody felt his own frown getting deeper. His left hand moved towards his vambrace again. “Strained how?” he asked.

Obi-Wan’s mouth quirked up. It wasn’t quite a smile. He said, “There was… a civil war. Some years ago. The Council sent a Master and her Padawan to help, at the request of the government at the time.”

Cody nodded. So far, it hardly sounded like anything out of the ordinary. He’d not seen the Jedi perform many such missions, but he’d read up on his General, which had led to reading up on the others. He knew what they’d done, before the war. Knew that, for the most part, they weren’t trained to fight, to lead a war.

He’d gotten lucky, he’d always thought, assigned to one of the few who had been. “And?” he prompted, when Obi-Wan didn’t continue.

Obi-Wan breathed in, looked to the side, blinking a few times in rapid succession. A bad memory, then. They never showed on his face, just in his eyes, and even then, only for a moment. He said, steadily, “And while she was there, things went… rapidly downhill. One side used a chemical weapon on several of the other side’s most populated cities. The Jedi were blamed. Master Sursind....barely made it off-world.”

Cody considered each word, carefully, and said, “Her Padawan?”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes. Swallowed. “Didn’t,” he said, flat. “The N’v’ritelli...took out their frustrations on the boy. There were-- They’ve had no contact with the Republic, since then. I assumed that, if they were to reopen their borders at some point, the Senate would send…” He trailed off, gaze far away.

“Someone who wasn’t a Jedi?” Cody suggested, the bad feeling unfurling down his spine, not warded off at all by the knocks on his vambrace.

Obi-Wan’s mouth curled more. He nodded. “Ah, well,” he said, tone getting chirpier, the way it did when he was preparing himself for something awful. “Needs must, I suppose.”

#

The bad feeling in Cody’s nerves hadn’t faded by the time they reached N’v’ritel. It lingered, moving under his skin, making a home in his gut. It only grew worse, when the N’v’ritelli agreed to let them come planetside with nary a word of protest.

The representative they spoke to over the holo looked friendly enough. She smiled, the entire communication, or, at least, her lips were curled up and her teeth were showing. The hair on the back of Cody’s neck was standing up, by the time the holo ended.

He said, “Maybe you should let us go down. I’ve seen you handle these discussions often enough.” 

Obi-Wan made a brief, fond sound, glancing over at him even as he tugged his cloak to order over his shoulders. “Trying to take my job, Commander?” he asked, amusement in the slant of his mouth and the gleam of his eyes.

It went away when Cody said, “Maybe this time, Sir.”

For a moment, they only looked at one another, Obi-Wan’s smile wilting, leaving nothing but traces of exhaustion he so often remembered to hide all across his expression. Cody watched him put those glimpses away again, watched him take a breath and draw his spine straight. Obi-Wan said, “I have no doubt you’d rise to the occasion, but we have our orders.”

And Cody could only nod, holding the opinions he’d been developing about some of the Senate’s orders behind his teeth, where they belonged.

#

N’v’ritelli representatives met them in the hangar, down on the planet. They smiled and exchanged pleasantries and Cody itched under his skin. He looked around at the city sprawling around them, the greenish sky overhead, and the delegates smiling at Obi-Wan, and itched to reach for his blaster.

Next to him, Crys knocked his fist against his vambrace, twice, even though Obi-Wan hadn’t said anything, anything at all about his feelings, good or bad.

Cody tried to take comfort in the fact that he wasn’t alone in feeling uneasy, but, somehow, no matter how he tried to arrange that in his head, he didn’t feel any better about it.

“This way,” Obi-Wan said, after a moment, turning and gesturing, and his smile was the one he wore when he was trying to charm someone into putting down a blaster. Cody nodded, and stuck close as they moved through the halls.

#

They ended up sitting through discussions that, a year ago, would have felt like they were going nowhere to Cody. But he’d learned how to listen to these conversations, and to the conversations that were going on below them. It came with the territory, part of working closely beside Obi-Wan.

He listened to the negotiations twist and turn and tried to reassure himself they were going well. The N’v’ritelli were cautious and they wanted promises, payment from the Republic, but they weren’t… opposed to accepting the deal.

Cody knew an agreement when he heard one, now, even if the exact words weren’t spoken, and there was one in place by the time Obi-Wan stood, hours later, reaching across to brush two fingers across the back of the N’v’ritelli representative’s hand. 

And Cody risked a relieved exhale, thinking, as Obi-Wan moved to stand beside him, that perhaps they’d all been wrong. Perhaps they’d just unnerved themselves, worried about something they’d never needed to consider.

Perhaps Obi-Wan really was just that good at a negotiating table.

“All done?” Cody asked, as the N’v’ritelli representatives stood, gathering up their things.

“Not yet,” Obi-Wan said, shaking his head, just once. “They’d like us to stay. Have a meal. Sleep. We’ll finalize everything in the morning.”

Cody nodded. At the very least, staying planetside meant it would be harder to sleep. Cody never slept soundly without the thrum of hyperdrive engines under his head. He’d gotten too used to the  _ Negotiator, _ over the years.

But it wasn’t his place to disagree and so he didn’t, not through dinner, not through being led to the fine rooms where they were all to stay, and not through Obi-Wan inclining his head before moving off to his own quarters.

But he did knock on his vambrace, twice, in quick succession.

He heard his brothers do the same.

#

Cody’s gut ached, as he tried to get some bunk time in that night, hard and cold as rock. He lasted, perhaps, a few hours before he rolled out of the bed - far nicer than he was used to - and moved for the door.

He planned to just swing by Obi-Wan’s quarters. Find out if he was sleeping. He often wasn’t, and some evenings he agreed to meditate, if Cody only asked. Meditation, he thought, might perhaps settle the stinging in his nerves and--

Reactions and instincts trained into his bones and blood had Cody drawing up short, before he ever reached the door. There was something...off, in the air of the hallway. A faint scent, one he’d gotten very familiar with: the ozone tang left behind by a lightsaber.

Cody’s spine itched as he reached the door. 

It was closed, neatly. But there was a dark smear, near the door knob. Something wet and tacky, when he touched it. He tried the doorknob, unsurprised to find it locked. He knocked, and, upon getting no response, decided that it might be time to cause what Obi-Wan liked to call “a diplomatic incident.”

Cody drew his blaster, leveled it on the door’s locking mechanism, and fired. The door made an unhappy sound at him, but when he twisted the knob it opened. The room inside was empty. There was just the bed, with half the sheets pulled onto the floor, Obi-Wan’s robe thrown in one corner, a chair knocked down, dark stains on the floor and a spray of liquid across one wall.

The ozone smell was stronger.

“Kriff,” he said, and turned, freezing again at the sound of noise out in the corridor. He flattened himself against the wall as the door swung open, and was ready to grab the man who stepped through, shoving him against the door frame and pressing the blaster right up into the hinge of his jaw.

The man he held, some kind of guard, Cody thought, blurted, “What--”

“The next words out of your mouth,” Cody interrupted, twisting the blaster a little, for emphasis, “better be the location of the General.”

The man glared at him, eyes sharp and mouth pulled back in a sneer, and Cody snapped, before the man could speak, “We’re going to find him, one way or another. If you make us look--”

The man spat across into Cody’s face.

Cody escalated the current diplomatic incident and then he went to find his brothers.

#

“They outnumber us,” Cody said, as they huddled together, briefly, in the rooms they’d been given. “I don’t want a stand-up fight, if we can help it. Based on the intel I saw, they’re nowhere near as well-trained, but we don’t have the numbers or the time to try to take this entire complex, do you hear me?”

He received echoes of “yes, sir,” from around the room and nodded. “Our priority is finding the General and extracting him. I want minimal casualties. We’re supposed to be negotiating with these people. Clear?”

He turned aside at the affirmative responses he got, jerked his chin to the side, and said, “Tektek, find a place to hole up and stay low. I want you in contact with the  _ Negotiator _ , tell them to stand by, we might need evac. Or more men. The rest of you, go.”

#

Cody had less than a dozen men and an entire planet to search. But there was that itch, in the back of his head, the one that hadn’t let him sleep. It got stronger, when he went one direction. Cody had learned to trust strange little nudges like that, over the years.

The Force, Obi-Wan had told him, guided you if you just listened to it.

Cody listened, moving through halls. He’d never been much for stealth, but he knew how to move quietly when he wanted to, knew how to keep his footsteps light and fast, dodging around corners, out through a beautiful, arching door, across a courtyard, into another building and another and, finally, out into a square where he drew up short as the first rays of dawn broke through the sky.

The courtyard looked like it had seen a lot of activity, recently. There was trash and debris scattered across the cobbles. Cody barely noted it, distracted by the two poles in the center of the square, and the figure hanging between them by his arms.

Cody’s gut dropped down somewhere around his feet as the soft fall of dawn brushed across copper hair, pale skin, all exposed and--

Cody crossed the square at a run, because Obi-Wan was just hanging, boneless and limp, from his wrists, his head fallen forward, legs twisted to the side, akimbo. He looked, terribly, like a discarded doll. Like a corpse.

A noise caught in Cody’s throat, unspoken, because his ribs had closed too tight around his lungs. Obi-Wan had said he’d had a bad feeling, and Cody hadn’t taken it seriously enough, hadn’t--

He drew up short, reaching the terrible tableau at the middle of the square, a pink and orange sunrise spilling across Obi-Wan’s skin and-- And there were marks, dark bruises down his arms, blood crusted around his wrists, streaks of it down towards his elbows. There was a little collar around his throat and--

His skin was covered with...things. Smears and bruises in strange, unpleasant shapes. There was trash around him. Rocks, fallen all around him, rocks of a size to be lifted and held and thrown and they would explain the bruises, wouldn’t they, the blood across his face. 

That was bad enough, but his back was--

A nightmare canvas. They’d -- Cody didn’t  _ know  _ what they’d done, but his back was criss-crossed with brutal lines of red and black and there were...loose, almost papery strips hanging off of him. It wasn’t until Cody reached for him, touching one shoulder, that he realized it was skin.

“Kriff, kriff,  _ kriff, _ ” Bones swore, skidding to a stop beside Cody, even as some other part of Cody’s mind took over. He heard himself bark orders over the comm, his voice calm and even, somehow, even as Bones barked at him, “We need to get him down, right now.”

Cody was a step ahead of him, there; he already had the knife at his belt out, raised towards the first rope around Obi-Wan’s wrist. He sawed through it, fast and vicious, moving to catch Obi-Wan as he fell towards the other side, making no effort to support himself because--

Cody shut down that train of thought, viciously, an arm curled around Obi-Wan’s back to support his weight. Bones took the knife away from him, sawing through the other rope, and--

And Obi-Wan just hung there, in Cody’s grip. Cody didn’t recall, actually, sinking to the ground, but there he was, the cobbles hard under his knees as he tried to get a look at Obi-Wan’s face and--

He looked peaceful, was the thing.

His expression was blank and empty, his eyes closed. All the tension had gone out of his face. The lines around his eyes had gone away. Cody heard a gutted sound come from somewhere, but couldn’t identify it, reaching up with his clumsy hand to pull off his helmet, toss it aside.

Bones was saying something to him, but it was just humming noise, even as Cody gripped his glove in his teeth and yanked it off, threw it somewhere, too. He looked for a pulse, because it didn’t end like this. It couldn’t. Obi-Wan  _ couldn’t _ \--

He had no pulse, when Cody pressed fingers against his neck. His skin was cold, sticky with blood. There was so much blood, just everywhere, blood and dark bruises, so stark across his skin because they’d  _ thrown rocks at him, _ they’d - Cody didn’t  _ know  _ what they’d done to his back, the marks looked almost like an electro-whip, but the damage was wrong, unless they’d used some other kind of weapon.

Something else to lash across his shoulders and back, to strip flesh and--

And Cody had dreams, about Obi-Wan dying. Nightmares. Had since the first campaign they fought beside one another. In some of the dreams, the worst ones, he was the one pulling the trigger, but--

But in most of them, it was a droid. Or Dooku. Or Ventress, or, once or twice, Skywalker, or--

In all of them, his chest felt exactly the way it did at the moment, rent in two, as though all his ribs had been cracked and bent open, exposing the heart of him, ripping it free.

Someone gripped the side of Cody’s head. Bones, he realized, as he looked up, away from Obi-Wan’s still expression. Bones was saying something, mouth moving. It took a moment before the sound snapped back in, as though Cody had taken a head injury, though he was almost certain he had not. “--to the ship. Commander, do you hear me?”

Cody blinked, the world flooding back in, crowding aside the agony in his chest to make room. Everything went broken-glass sharp, all at once. Clean and crisp. Jagged. He breathed in, breathed out, and said, “Take him.”

He shifted Obi-Wan over to Bones, who swore, trying to gather Obi-Wan up as other troopers sprinted into the square, converging from everywhere they’d been searching. Less than twelve of them, Cody thought. He hadn’t wanted a fight, a few moments ago.

He’d been worried about - about some treaty, or the other.

He looked across at his men and stood, grabbing his helmet and shoving it on. There were ten of them. A hundred guards in the palace. They wouldn’t be a problem. The number of soldiers out in the city proper likely would be.

Still.

Cody and his brothers knew how to make war.

And he was, down in some deep, cold place inside his chest, not particularly concerned with whether or not he walked out the other side of this alive. He said, drawing his blaster, checking the clip, “We’re going to take the southern wing first.”

“Commander!” Bones said, voice all sharp, but Cody wasn’t listening. “Stop!”

“Sir?” Quill asked, stumbling to a stop, staring over at Bones and Obi-Wan. “Is he--?”

“And then we’ll sweep west. We should be able to secure the entire complex within an hour.”

“Kriffing--”

“What are we doing with the N’v’ritelli prisoners?” Misfire asked, tone as flat as Cody’s, matched exactly. 

Cody looked over at him. They’d taken Obi-Wan. Collared him. Strung him up. Thrown rocks at him and - and whipped him with something and then  _ left him there, left him hanging _ . And they’d--they’d taken a Padawan, before, Obi-Wan had said, Cody’s thoughts twisting, brutally, to little Ahsoka. It was terribly easy to imagine her here, instead. And for a moment, something dark rose up in Cody’s mind, words formed on his tongue before he swallowed them down, dismissing them. 

More murders wouldn’t undo what they’d done. Cody said, around the aching, splintering pain inside him, “Make them secure. The Jedi can sort out how to punish them for what they did.”

“Listen to--”

“Yes, sir,” Misfire said.

“2224!” Bones snarled, each number spat like a gunshot, and Cody blinked, turned to look automatically, because some things you didn’t forget, some things never went away. Ignoring your designation was a punishable offense, was--

Cody blinked down at Bones, revulsion rolling through him in a wave, because they didn’t - they didn’t just  _ ignore  _ one another’s names. He said, flat, “Get him back to the  _ Negotiator _ , Bones. Don’t leave him here.”

“I’m not going to!” Bones snapped, his voice raised in a shout, something like relief in his expression, “Karking  _ damnit _ , Cody, _ listen to me _ , I said  _ stop _ .” Cody shook his head, took another step, and Bones barked, “He’s not dead.”

The words froze Cody in place better than any tractor beam could have done. He felt his joints lock, even as he turned to look back. Bones was curled half-over Obi-Wan, a scanner in hand, his other hand curled around Obi-Wan’s shoulders, holding him close and careful. “What?”

“You know that thing the Jedi do,” Bones said, talking fast, perhaps worried he’d lose Cody’s attention again. “Where they go...somewhere else? He’s not dead. He’s just--deep in the Force. But he  _ will  _ die, if I don’t get him some actual help. Soon. And I can’t do that if you’re running off to take this planet in his name. He wouldn’t want you to, anyway. You know that..”

Cody stared at him for another beat, treacherous hope trying to crawl up into his head. He said, “Are you--”

“He’s alive,” Bones cut in, sharp, jagged. “Cody, I swear to you, I wouldn’t--he’s  _ alive _ .”

And that was enough. Had always been enough. Cody shifted, breaking inside all over again, and said, “Karking hell. Alright. Let’s go. To the shuttle,  _ now _ .”

#

Cody couldn’t quite believe that Bones was telling the truth. He moved through the city on faith, on the bitter dregs of hope. The N’v’ritelli tried to stop them, and Cody barely remembered the struggles that followed. 

They gained their shuttle and, by the point, reinforcements had arrived from the  _ Negotiator _ , by that point, it was just a matter of breaking atmo, returning to the ship. Cody let Crys pilot, moving back to stand and stare as Bones worked, scrambling around with desperation he wouldn’t spare for a dead man, surely.

There were still only the shreds of desperate hope in Cody’s chest by the time they reached the  _ Negotiator _ ; medics met them in the hangar, with a stretcher. They ran Obi-Wan through the halls, and Cody--

Followed, eventually, watched them scramble all over him, listened to them yell at each other.

He had to turn away, had to go report what had happened to the Senate. To the Jedi. They deserved to know, he thought, though he had not contacted them directly before. Not on his own. 

He did not manage to believe, really, until he went back to the medical bay and found Obi-Wan floating in a bacta tank. And then he sagged, all at once, reaching out to brace a hand on a nearby medical bed, because his knees weren’t working properly. He exhaled, ragged, and Bones moved up beside him, reaching out to grip Cody’s shoulder.

“Stay as long as you need,” Bones said, eventually.


End file.
